Councillors fear Mfp-like scandal, hit brakes on delegating authority

The 20-year-old MFP leasing scandal that cost local taxpayers millions was weighing heavy on the minds of city councillors this week, as they deferred a report that recommends they hand decision-making authority to administration, on dozens of city hall matters.

The MFP scandal “scares the (expletive) out of me every single day,” Ward 1 Coun. Fred Francis said Tuesday. He acknowledged it was on his mind as he and fellow councillors agreed to defer the administration report. The report is intended to eliminate the red tape that bogs down various approvals. In some cases, removing some of the layers would reduce the approval time, from five or six months to three or four weeks.

It was described as basically a housekeeping exercise to reduce red tape, improve efficiency and eliminate long waits for approvals. But Francis said he was alarmed by some of the recommendations, such as delegating authority to the CAO when it comes to transferring money in and out of certain reserves, and converting temporary positions at city hall into permanent positions.

Francis said he had a motion ready to deny the recommendations, “and I'm sure it would have won,” until a deferral was urged Monday by Mayor Drew Dilkens. Dilkens suggested administration could weed out the controversial delegations of authority and come back with recommendations that council can agree on.

“I've been here long enough to know some of this stuff makes some feel uneasy and I understand why,” the mayor told council, citing the MFP scandal, which came to light in 2002.

The MFL scandal involved financing schemes, starting in the 1990s, that were touted by city administrators as money-savers. Leases for the landfill, buses, fire trucks and fitness equipment were supposed to cost the city and county $91 million (at 4.1 per cent interest) but ended up costing $314 million (at 10.4 per cent).

Local taxpayers are still paying the price of that debacle through a 26-year debenture paid (as part of the legal settlement) by the Essex Windsor Solid Waste Authority that will end up costing $151 million by the time it's finished in 2031.

“Something like that scares you to death. Oversight is good,” Francis said. “Very simply, people don't elect me and other elected officials to delegate authority on matters of finance, on issues of budget, on issues that require public engagement, listening to what people have to say.”

The report doesn't just recommend delegating some authority from council to the CAO, but also from the CAO to commissioners and from commissioners to “regular business processes.”

They include having the CAO instead of council approve:

transfers in and out of pollution control and IT reserves to pay for budget-approved expenditures needed to keep systems running;

minor changes to Transit Windsor routes and their frequency;

quarterly compliance reports; annual participation in the Municipal Benchmarking Network of Canada program;

some subcontracting; and converting temporary employees to permanent to improve employee effectiveness and reduce turnover.

Other recommendations include changing the purchasing bylaw to allow the CAO to approve budget-approved requisitions up to $500,000, up from $150,000 currently, and giving the city planner power to approve certain demolitions instead of council.

Applying to the CAO for permission to hold a sidewalk sale can take four to six weeks, according to the report, which says delegating authority to the commissioner of infrastructure services would reduce the time to seven to 10 days.

“I think the public would probably be surprised with how many approval layers and review layers are involved with some of this fairly routine work the city does,” CAO Jason Reynar said Tuesday. But he said he understands council's concerns, especially given the city's history with MFP and the sense that administration was not bringing all the information to council it should have.

“So 20 years later, technology is improved, there are ways of ensuring compliance and internal auditing that looks different than it did 20 years ago and a lot of the multi-layer approval requirements

is one of the areas we've identified as eating up a lot of resources.”

An example, he said, is what happens when a new sewer pipe is installed on a street. There's a staffer at city hall whose sole job is generating agreements with all the adjoining landowners who need to connect in — as many as 120 on a single installation. As it stands now, every one of those agreements goes to Reynar for approval, rather than having him approve the overall project and having the individual agreements approved at a lower level.

“And I'm not cheap by the hour, I'm kind of expensive. So the question is, is there a better use of my time?”

While councillors at Monday's meeting said the report contained some really good ideas to reduce red tape, many expressed concerns.

“I think that there is risk,” said Ward 9 Coun. Kieran Mckenzie. “What we're being asked to do here from a council perspective is to give up some of our oversight.”

Ward 6 Coun. Jo-anne Gignac said she was worried delegating authority means depriving the public the chance to have a say like they would if a matter came before council.

“There's got to be an avenue for the public to know and comment even before the change of parking on a street or changing it to oneway, which might seem rather benign but to a neighbourhood it's important.”